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The diehard gang of Muslim extremists responsible for last week's attack on the southern Russian city of Nalchik consisted mainly of local militants intent on creating a strict Islamic state independent of Moscow. The gunmen were not from Chechnya but belonged to a group from Kabardino-Balkaria, the Russian republic of which Nalchik is the capital, providing alarming evidence that - far from dying down as claimed by President Putin - the bloody Chechen conflict is spreading. Most of the gunmen were thought to be members of Yarmuk, a homegrown fundamentalist group that the local authorities twice claimed to have destroyed....

ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia (AP) - Security forces on Sunday stormed an apartment building in southern Russia where a small group of suspected Islamic militants had barricaded themselves, killing all the rebels, police said. A heavy firefight broke out early Sunday morning and security forces then entered the apartment building, said an officer in the Interior Ministry department in Nalchik, the capital of Kabardino-Balkariya, where the day-old standoff came to an end. He said it was not yet known how many militants had been in the apartment. The alleged militants had been holed up inside a second-floor apartment in the latest in...

ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia (AP) - A small group of suspected Islamic militants were barricaded inside an apartment house in southern Russia Saturday in a standoff with hundreds of security forces who evacuated neighbouring buildings and cut off gas supplies. The suspects were holed up inside a second floor apartment in Nalchik, the capital of the Kabardino-Balkariya region, in the latest in a series of confrontations between law enforcement authorities and extremists in the volatile North Caucasus region, which includes Chechnya. Last month, security forces killed seven alleged Islamic extremists in the same city in a two-day battle with members of the...

Rebuilders pay a visit to stricken Baghdad Garner calls top priorities restoring water, electricity Tuesday, April 22, 2003 BY CHARLES J. HANLEY Associated Press BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Glimmers of a new Iraq were evident yesterday, as the American charged with rebuilding a ravaged country came to Baghdad, and Muslim multitudes converged on holy cities for a ritual long suppressed by Saddam Hussein's regime. But the work of rooting out the old Iraq went on. Military officials announced the arrest of a key figure in the bloody suppression of the Shi'a Muslim uprising of 1991 -- Muhammad Hamza al-Zubaydi, the "Shiite...